The Displacement of Thranduil
by what'sherface707
Summary: Sauron has worked a nasty piece of magic and sent the Elvenking forwards in time. He ends up in the home of one Kate Voss, an unsuspecting young woman with little knowledge of Tolkien's works. The two have to work out this new arrangement while Thranduil adjusts to our modern world. (Probably no romance.) DISCLAIMER FOR WHOLE FIC: I DON'T OWN TOLKIEN'S STUFF.
1. Sauron

It was the year 3017 of the Third Age of the Years of the Sun in Arda. Sauron grew slowly in strength from the depths of Mordor. Dol Guldur was held by Khamûl the Easterling and he pressed ever onwards against the wood-kingdoms.

The Dark Lord's fiery eye was still small and weak, but he cast his gaze upon that which was once called Greenwood the Great. Dark spawn infected the forest. He could see the spiders scuttling about, the blackened butterflies, the orcs hiding in the shadows. The Nandor stayed beneath the boughs of those rotting trees.

Sauron recalled the spark of cold anger he nursed for those Elves. Their three Rings—Narya, Nenya, and Vilya—were hidden from him and the Wood Elves of Taur-nu-Fuin—that is, Mirkwood—still held their own against the encroaching sickness. If only, if only… if only Sauron had his Ring of Power… the Elven kingdom would fall to ruin and fires would crumble their precious forest. Alas, he required patience. But the corrupted Maia had his third-in-command stationed there, a Ringwraith who could act for him.

So Sauron commanded Khamûl to do a work of trickery against the Wood Elves in Mirkwood. He knew—perhaps better than any—that a force without a leader is as useless as a body without a head. The Nazgûl still possessed his Ring of Power and, while his power and abilities were strictly under control of Sauron, he still retained the great magical ability the Ring had given him. Though he wasn't the Sorcerer he had once been when he was still mortal, Khamûl could work great spells with the bidding of his Master.

The Maia set his mind upon the weave of Eä. He still heard the lilting melodies of his fellow Ainur, singing the very existence of the Universe. Sauron's own voice was still present, his voice as it once was, when he was still called Mairon. Eä was orderly because of his song. Indeed, Sauron loved order and efficiency and despised any waste. What was more efficient than time? Time rushed by in a torrent, sweeping away all that went misused. With the physical presence of Khamûl and the soft plying of the Ainulindalë of the Maia, Sauron shall pluck the King of the Woodland realm and toss him into the ever-flowing stream. The Elf would know mortality as he withered to dust before the eyes of his kin. Fear would burrow deep into the hearts of the Eldar and then, _then,_ would Sauron dominate their wills.

It was something he had been contemplating for a very long time.


	2. The Elvenking

A battle, he recalled. A great and furious battle against an allegiance of spiders and orcs, led by the Nazgûl from Dol Guldur. He had led his people against the evil, being the first to charge. So many Nandor died… and the Ringwraith had stretched out a hand as if to throttle him. Perhaps he had, he mused dryly. But no, he remembered a great sense of being buffeted forwards by wind, or water, or perhaps something else, and a song so beautiful it made him weep, and a fiery anger when he was not swallowed by the flow but simply swept along.

And where had riding the current taken him?

Thranduil did not know.

He did not even know if he could open his eyes. When he tried, there was little light to see by.

It seemed that he was in a house, but it was unlike any house he had seen before. He did not know how to describe the furnishings, except that they were well-used and a bit messy. Drapes were drawn over the dark windows. The only illumination spilled from the open door of a neighboring room. The light didn't flicker, as if it came not from a flame but a steady source. Thranduil heard a low muttering coming from the room. So that was his… host. He looked around the area again, bewildered both by his surroundings and as to why he was neither in a bed—if his host was a healer—or in a cell—if his host was a captor.

He was no longer in Mirkwood, he was certain of that.

Pushing himself up into a sitting position, the Elvenking marveled at the state of his body. He was still in his battle robes and light armour, and his sword in its sheath. The last he recalled, he had been coated in the grime of battle, his blade with black blood. But now he was completely clean. It seemed that the current that had brought him here had scoured away every speck of filth. It had not helped the wear of his clothes, though. Every rip, every dent was larger. The fabric had been frayed further and the armour looked brittle. Like everything that was not made to last had been aged much longer than it was when Thranduil last remembered.

He made to stand, wincing when his muscles ached, atypical for an Elf. He gripped the side of a glass tabletop for support, only to wince again when he accidentally sent a mug clattering across the table and thumping to the ground.

The muttering from the other room ceased at once. Thranduil put his hand on the hilt of his sword. The silence seemed to stretch on.

Then a cat meowed and a voice hushed it frantically.

The Elvenking raised an eyebrow. It appeared his host was more frightened than he was. He heard a creak and cautious footsteps. A shadow stretched out of the light cast from the room. It was too distorted for Thranduil to judge the size of his host. He drew his sword with a quiet _shick_, inspecting it. The blade looked like it had withstood the decay his clothes had undergone. The moment a head peeked out the door, he had the tip at the person's neck.

"_Eep!_"

Hazel eyes magnified by owlish spectacles and fear stared back at him. Brown hair escaped a messy bun and hung in wisps across the freckled face. It was a woman, a daughter of Men, at the end of his blade, frozen in shock and terror. She clutched the doorframe like a lifeline. Her garments were possibly the most outrageous pieces of clothing he had ever seen: a wrinkled tunic in a yellowy-green so bright it seemed to glow on its own with thick letters of a foreign alphabet stitched across the front, and rumpled maroon trousers with black dots spattered across them.

They stood like that for a while, Thranduil analyzing the situation and the woman too scared to move.

Then the cat meowed again and she jumped at the noise. She started babbling in a language he couldn't understand, on and on, like a dam of words had broken. The Elvenking took a half-step back at the torrent. The longer she spoke, the more he grasped her meaning. Rubbing his forehead with his free hand, he closed his eyes as a dull headache began to form behind his temples.

"…and I swear I don't have _anything_ of value here, this place is practically a cave, it's just my messy old place. Please, please, don't hurt me, I promise I'll give you my wallet and my piggy bank—oh god, are you here to murder me? No, please, I'm only 24; I'm too young to die!" she cried, aggravating him. "Don't kill—"

"Be quiet!" he snapped, and she promptly shut up. He ran his hand over his face with a sigh and dropped it, looking at the woman again. If possible, she seemed to be even more terrified than before. "Explain… where I… I am."

That wasn't Westron. Thranduil fumbled with the new words that tasted odd in his mouth. He must have let some of his confusion show in his face, for the woman's brow furrowed in curiosity. He sent her a stern look.

She swallowed. "You're in my house."

"I—" He grimaced. The language was new, odd and unruly. Eru knew why he could speak it at all. "I gathered."

"In my living room?"

"Yes."

"Standing with a sword pointed at me?" Her voice squeaked on _sword_.

He thought carefully about the strange words he would use before he attempted pronouncing them. "Where does your home lie on a map?"

Her eyes held mostly bewilderment now. "Um… SoCal?" She again saw his confusion and softened. "You seriously don't know where you are?"

Thranduil found that speech was coming easier. "You are either a pathetic guard or a fellow prisoner in this scheme of the Enemy's, for you cannot be a healer. I have not heard of this fortress of Soekal, but my people will find it. They will attack unceasingly until I am freed, so I suggest that you find a warden and tell him that this place will end in ruin."

She simply looked at him for a long time. "SoCal…" she said. "As in Southern California…" The woman almost stepped forward before remembering that there was a blade at her throat. "You are seriously lost, aren't you?"

Frustration bubbled up in the Elvenking. "What is this southern realm of California? Is it in Far Harad?" He pressed his sword a bit closer to her throat. "Do not lie to me."

The woman stifled a shriek. "_Please_ don't hurt me, please, please… I'm telling the truth! I don't know if 'Far Harad' is some sort of European slang for America, but this is San Diego in California!" She whimpered. "I'm not lying…"

"Show me a map," he barked.

"It's over there."

"Show me."

"But I can't even see—"

"_Now._"

She hastened to obey and stumbled across the living room, very aware of the weapon that remained in her guest's hand. Nervousness made her forget the placement of her belongings and she tripped over them more than once. A board hung on the wall over a cluttered desk, pinned with wrinkled paper and diagrams. She tore many of these off, leaving them scattered across the floor. An unfamiliar world map was under these and, squinting to make it out, she pointed at the south-west coast of one of the continents.

"See, San Diego, California, United States of America, North America, Northern Hemisphere, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the _Universe_," she said and glared at him. "Now can you leave me alone and _put up that sword?_"

Thranduil let the tip of his blade drag on the carpeted floor. His Elven eyes easily seeing in the dark, he stared at the map. There was nothing he recognized. The coasts and rivers were completely different, and the mountain ranges stretched across strange lands. Even the language he could not decipher. He swallowed.

"Seriously?" the woman squeaked. "You—you don't recognize any of it? Holy—" She clapped a hand over her mouth and mumbled through her fingers. "Are you an alien?"

He did not deign to reply.

"Oh my god. _Ooohhhh_ my god. Holy cow. Oh my _god_, you are an actual _alien_, from another _planet! _Oh my god! Oh no, they're gonna take you to Area 51 and cut you up and—wait, you aren't here to abduct me for experiments, are you? Oh my god—"

"If it isn't to difficult," he said quietly. "I would rather that you keep your blabbering mouth shut for the moment."

She sputtered.

"Earth," he mused. "You said Earth… And yet this map is nothing like Arda…"

"Arda? Is that, like—"

The Elvenking did not listen to her, instead musing to himself, "Perhaps… perhaps the Enemy has worked mischief here… But he is not strong enough to even take corporeal form…"

"Is the Enemy some rival alien trying to take over your planet?"

He shot her an annoyed glance. "Would you remain silent?"

She snapped her mouth shut.

"No, the Dark Lord could not have done this—"

"Voldemort?" she blurted.

"If you cannot keep quiet," he snapped. "Then I will be tempted to gag you." Thranduil heaved a sigh at her affronted expression, then his eyes narrowed as a thought occurred to him. "The Nazgûl."

The woman took a breath to say something, but refrained when he glared at her.

He stood there for a long moment in silence, thinking. She took a seat on the chair near the desk, keeping a wary eye on his sword.

After what seemed like an awkwardly long time of quiet to the woman, Thranduil said, "Where is the nearest wizard?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Mithrandir, or Gandalf to Men, Saruman, Radagast… surely you've heard of wizards?"

Her face drained of colour. "Gandalf… You mean Gandalf the Grey?"

"Yes, and if there is no wizard close enough, then I must see a community of Elves."

"E-elves?" she muttered. "You're joking. You've got to be joking. You're just a story. That's it. I've finally snapped. You're a hallucination."

Thranduil nearly growled at her. "I assure you, mortal, I am very real."

"You can't be."

He raised his sword. "Would you like to test that?"

"But you're from a movie!" she said. Running her hands through her bun, she began to think aloud. "I should pay more attention to pop culture… _Damn_… hasn't the second one come out by now?"

"If you do not stop prattling on, I promise you that you _will_ be gagged!" Annoyance had been left far behind. Thranduil was angry.

She laughed weakly. "How can you? You can't be real; it's impossible!"

"I am real!"

"But. You. Are._ Fictional!_" She clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide behind her spectacles.

The Elvenking lowered his blade. "What?"


	3. Hallucinations and Heartstrings

"Um, I said you're fictional?" Kate squeaked through her fingers.

She hadn't meant to say that. Nope. Not at all. You aren't supposed to say things that will make the angry attacker/hallucination of a fictional character even angrier. And yet…

When Kate Voss had heard the clatter of something against her coffee table, she had jumped nearly a yard in the air off her bed. Her writer's mind leaped immediately to the worst conclusion: a burglar! Or worse, a serial killer! Then Gogurt had meowed—blasted cat!—and Kate had steeled herself to see what terror lay waiting in her living room. She had hardly expected to find a costumed man with a sword stuttering over his sentences and demanding to know his location. Despite the danger, she couldn't help but admit to herself that he was ethereally beautiful in the yellow light from her room: with long platinum-blonde hair and glinting eyes, dressed in silvery robes, light armour, and a shimmering scarlet cloak. Throughout the encounter a vague little thought had been tugging at the back of her mind, insisting he looked a lot like those Elves from Peter Jackson's movies, and even bore a strong resemblance to the pretty boy—what'shisname, Legless? Close enough.

Then the man mentioned Nazgûl and Gandalf and she didn't know what she thought of that. Soon Kate had theorized that this was a madman fantasizing himself into the role of a fictional character, but that didn't explain the sword or the frighteningly accurate appearance. He had to be a hallucination, a illusion of her caffeine-overloaded mind. If he was, then her brain was doing a damn good job at tugging her heartstrings. He looked so lost and confused. Kate knew that hallucinations could be tactile, so she put no trust in the cold tip of the blade against her neck. She would have to find another person to verify the physical-or-not presence of the stunning man—or Elf, she supposed—before her. If he turned out to be a figment of her imagination, then Kate knew she'd feel pretty stupid after talking to, obeying, and squealing in terror at a hallucination. And if he was real, well, then… She didn't want to think about it right then.

At the moment he was staring at her quizzically. "Fictional?" he echoed. "What do you mean by that?" God, he looked so familiar. What movie, though? The Lord of the Rings? The two Hobbit movies? She couldn't judge well on the Hobbit. She had seen the first a measly two times and the second while she was half asleep, only waking up for the glory of Smaug.

Kate shut her eyes. Why her? Out of all the people on this Earth, it was she that had to deal with this, and not a Tolkien fanatic that would know exactly what to do. "There are books here, written by a professor called Tolkien, and, um, they, uh… well, they're stories about Middle-earth. Gandalf is in them, or at least most of them—that's why I recognized his name—and they all deal with the story of the One Ring." At his sharp look, she sped up, staring at her hands in her lap. "Where it came from, how it was lost, et cetera. I haven't read any of Tolkien's books, but I have seen the movie adaptations, and going off what I remember from those, you've gotta be an Elf from Sauron's time as a Dark Lord."

He quirked an eyebrow when she mentioned movies—of _course, _he wouldn't know what a motion picture is—but did not pursue the subject. "Sauron has been a Dark Lord more than once," he said.

She had a mini-panic attack. He wasn't supposed to come back after the Ring was destroyed! What time was this guy from? Should she risk it all and detail the events surrounding the Ring's destruction in hopes that he would recognize them? Oh, what the heck, he couldn't be real anyways, so who cares?

The Elf continued, "He was first known as the Dark Lord when he rose to power with the creation of the twenty Rings; after his downfall at the hand of Isildur, he went into hiding for hundreds of years before resurfacing in Dol Guldur as the Necromancer."

"Oh, right! When the whole…" She flapped her hands about to illustrate her point. "_'I am Thorin and I shall defeat Smaug with only a few Dwarves, a burglar, and my majestic hair'_ thing was going on." She muttered to herself, "I saw that movie, I know this stuff." But who the heck was he?

Much to Kate's surprise, her comment about Thorin earned a reserved smile from the stern Elf. "Yes. That is one way to put it. Sauron fled to Mordor after the attack of the White Council and he has been growing in power there ever since."

"Sooo…" So it was after the Hobbit, but before the Lord of the Rings. The Ring was still with Bilbo. "Okay. Right. Yeah, I'll—right. No spoilers." Just in case. She nodded and crossed herself in a faux-solemn manner. "I shall not spoiler. I shall not be like River Song, no matter how awesome she is."

"River Song?" The eyebrow rose again.

"Yeah. Long story."

The whisper of a blade made Kate look up in alarm, but he was only sheathing his sword. He stared at the world map with a wooden tone to his voice. "It appears that I have been taken from Middle-earth and placed in a world completely foreign. I apologize for my hostility, milady. I shall not bother you any longer." He inclined his head.

She swallowed, finding herself overcome with pity all of a sudden. After all, what would it feel like to find yourself in a strange world by unknown means for an indefinite amount of time, speaking a strange language, with a strange person knowing all about your homeland? Kate couldn't imagine. Hallucination or not, this guy was really getting to her. She opened her mouth to either say something consoling, or possibly offer him his choice of her comfort food, she didn't know, but what came out was, "I still think I've gone crazy and you're just a trick of my mind."

The Elf didn't say anything. Was it just her imagination, or did he stiffen a bit?

Blushing—thank the Lord the room was dark—she backpedaled. "No, I mean, well yeah I do, but still. Figment of imagination or not, I'm not gonna just dump you on the street. 'Do unto thy neighbor what thou wouldst have done unto yourself,'" she quipped.

Now she was _certainly_ crazy. Offering her house to a stranger, never mind that she was fairly he sure wasn't real, was a giant overstepping of her boundaries. What would her dear mother say?

"That is… an interesting proverb," he murmured, looking her up and down as if reevaluating her. "You would open your home to me?"

Kate swallowed all her fears and objections and nodded. "Yes," she declared. "You shall stay with me until you find a way back or wish to leave."

In a second the Elf had stepped up to her and taken her hand. He bowed over it, brushing his lips across her knuckles. "An eternity of thanks, milady. I am in your debt." The ends of his hair brushed her knees and Kate suddenly felt ashamed of her old polka-dot pajama pants. "What is your name?"

"Uhm," she stuttered, blushing again. "Kate Voss."

He withdrew. "Thank you again, Lady Kate. I am Thranduil, King of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood."

She tried mouthing his name but got horribly confused. "Thran-wha-huh?"

A smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. "Thranduil."

"May I just call you Thrandy please?"

"_No_."

"Wait…" What Thranduil said settled in. "You're… a _king_. The _king of Mirkwood_. You're, like, _really_ important." She gulped. "Uh, your majesty." Kate tried to do a little bow from her seat but nearly fell off.

He glanced at the map again. "I am not a king here."

"Right. So—right. Okay. I'll just—well if you don't mind, I mean—could I then… um…"

As if sensing her uncertainty, the Elf said, "You need not trouble yourself with formalities, Kate. My title has no meaning at this time."

"Um. Right. Okay then, Thranduil," she said, sounding out the name carefully.

What had she just done?

Oh well, he was a hallucination anyway, so no harm could come of it.


End file.
